My refurbished SGP 5 from tiger direct arrived today but there is some problems with it. At first It powered up and I was able to go online and download an app and take pictures, but I had to power it down and leave the house for errands. When I arrived back home to test it out it doesnt seem to be working anymore.
When I hold the power button the samsung label comes on and it just sits their until I hold the power button again to turn it off. After powering down it stays off for about 5 seconds and turns on again without me even touching the thing and it sits on the samsung screen without actually booting up. After holding the power button to shut it completely down after 5 seconds it turns on again by itself and will continue to do this until I plug it in. It seems to boot up when it is plugged into the outlet, but it freezes after 1 minute of use and repeats the cycle of never booting up if I unplug it.

Is their anything I can do with it? Factory reset or anything? I really don't want to go through the hassle of returning it just yet and thought i'd ask here to see if their is anything I can do. Thanks in advance.

hold volume up and power at the same time till it restarts then let go of JUST the power button, continue to hold the volume up till the stock recovery comes up and you can try a wipe data/factory reset from there. Make sure its charged up, if the battery is to low weird things can happen, let us know how this does.

I tried it and nothing happened. Right now it is sitting here saying samsung on the screen. The lights that light up the home button, back button and menu button on the bottom are not illuminated. It's like it doesnt boot up or something. And I can't turn it off because it just turns right back on by itself.

Interestingly though i tried power and volume down and a downloading screen came up with the android and a shovel picture, not sure what it is or does but it's different than the samsung screen im used to seeing now.

Okay i think it wiped it, but nothing has changed it still turns on by itself and sits their. After 10 minutes of trying I finally got back into the power up volume page and selected the reboot option. It actually booted this time but crashed/froze within 1 minute of being on. Kind of discouraged about this device. I'll try again in the morning.

I let it charge all night and nothing has changed. Last night I plugged it in and the screen turned from the samsung screen into the loading circle, but it was frozen. When I woke up and checked it it was still on the same loading circle screen. Then I unplugged it and shut it off, but it came right back on again on it's own. So I left it be for the whole morning, about 6 hours, and the battery is completely dead and it won't turn on now.

well I went for the refurb because it was $139.99. Even on cyber monday the cheapest new one I found was $180. If this next refurb is jacked up also, I'll ask for my money back and get a new one, or ebay a used one that works.

well, if it didn't work and you feel particularly adventurous, try rooting and flashing entropy's kernel onto your device. This sounds like a kernel problem, one that I've had before after flashing an experimental kernel, and have fixed by flashing entropy's kernel. (It's also possible that it's hardware malfunctioning on you)

Easiest way to go about this would be to look up sanchezhacker's post on flashing 2.3.6 (ie eryigit's ROM) on this forum, which gives easy step-by-step instructions on the whole process.

It should be implied that you'll be rooted and have a nice custom ROM after this process.

well I went for the refurb because it was $139.99. Even on cyber monday the cheapest new one I found was $180. If this next refurb is jacked up also, I'll ask for my money back and get a new one, or ebay a used one that works.

Did the second SGP5 have any issues? Just order a reburb SGP5 from ebay as well and wanted to hear what happened.

whenever i get a new device with a battery i plug it in to charge for a minimum of 12 hours before I turn it on...hard to resist, but as someone said, low battery can make weird things happen --things that sometimes cannot be undone after tinkering and then charging